The present invention relates in general to providing computer network communication links at a predetermined quality of service (QoS), and, more specifically, to financial compensation for different parts of an internetwork carrying the predetermined QoS traffic.
TCP/IP-based networks and internetworks such as the Internet utilize packet-based communication wherein the digital data comprising a communication signal are broken into packets which are labeled with a destination address, forwarded via routers over shared pathways to the destination, and then reassembled at the destination into the original data. Well known shortcomings of packet-based networks are the congestion, dropped packets, and long latency times that occur when the amount of network traffic approaches the bandwidth capacity of the network. Long latency times are especially a problem for certain real-time applications such as streaming multimedia and Internet telephony.
To address these shortcomings, network protocols and standards have been defined for allowing a predetermined quality of service (QoS) to be maintained between two nodes in a network. For example, dedicated routers and routing segments can be set aside to handle a special subset of network traffic so that the dedicated segments are not overloaded. Alternatively, portions of the available bandwidth on particular segments may be devoted to specific users so that a predetermined QoS (e.g., a maximum latency or time delay for transmission) can be guaranteed for the specific users (i.e., the dedicated bandwidth remains unused when the specific users are not transmitting or receiving). Certain types of virtual private networks (VPNs) can be set up in order to provide a guaranteed QoS, for example. Protocols developed as tools for enabling differentiated QoS transport include Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP), Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS), and Diffserv.
Providing a predetermined level of QoS causes a network provider to incur increased costs for added hardware resources and/or for underutilization of existing hardware resources. Equipment may often need to be replaced in order to support new protocols such as RSVP or MPLS. In an internetwork (e.g., the Internet), data transmissions frequently pass from one access network (e.g., the Internet service provider of one user) to another access network (e.g., the host of a website or other service or application) through one or more backbone networks which may all be owned and operated as separate financial entities. The user typically pays flat-rate access fees to their access network which, in turn, purchases usage on a backbone network. In order to gain access to a commercial website, service, or network application, the user may also have to make arrangements with a remote service provider to pay for the access (e.g., purchasing a video movie to be received as streaming multimedia over the Internet after providing a credit card number).
When a user wishes to communicate with a desired remote service while maintaining a predetermined QoS, every segment in the data path between the user and the desired service must maintain the predetermined QoS (including any backbone networks and any routing arbiter or network access points for exchanging traffic between networks). The many separate networks traversed by the data path are likely to include networks operated by separate entities. Consequently, network communication links operating at a predetermined QoS between endpoints in unrelated (i.e., not commonly controlled) networks have not become widely available. Such QoS-regulated links are typically limited to those that are set up at a network operator level and either 1) work only when both endpoints are within the same network, or 2) are set up by advance agreement between operators of the networks involved to allow predetermined QoS service between two specifically identified endpoints (such as in a VPN).
Tiered pricing (i.e., paying increased fees for higher QoS capabilities) and usage-based billing are becoming more common in Internet service models. However, users have still not been able to flexibly or spontaneously obtain higher QoS service on an as-needed basis with any QoS-capable services on-the-fly.